Talon King Ikiss and a few other undocumented boss buffs
by Mike Schramm 
Feb 14th 2007 at 9:32AM
Alistairover of Thunderhorn (who is an oomkin guildie of mine, and, I must say, regularly outdps's higher level warlocks, rogues and hunters) dropped a note to me in guild chat about Talon King Ikiss, the last boss in Sethekk Halls. We ran that place together last week, and the boss has an Area of Effect spell that hurts a lot, but can be interrupted with kicks, Earth Shocks, or any other interruption spell. Not so much anymore, however, says Ali.Apparently 2.07 made him invulnerable to almost any type of interruption, and players aren't happy about it. I'll still say the fight's not completely impossible (there's a strategy where you can all group around him to keep him from blinking, and then hide behind a pillar to avoid line of sight on the AoE, and another strat where you just do what you can to time heals with the AoE and keep clothies out of range, and I'm sure interested parties will include more in the comments below), but I haven't done it myself since the patch-- I've just heard it's very, very hard.
Additionally, Illhoof, a boss in Karazhan, got a nice undocumented buff-- his shadowbolts hit harder, as does his Imp. Players at that level (that's a fight I haven't done at all yet) say he's so hard he's not even worth the drops at this point. And another boss in Karazhan, the Maiden of Virtue, got a little bit of a buff on her "Repentance" spell, but apparently the fight's still easy.
As of this writing, there's no official Blizzard response to any of this, which could be taken either way, but is probably a pretty good indication these are all working as intended. Sethekk Halls, it seems, just got a bit harder.
Update: Our own Eliah Hecht reports that Tseric has said "working as intended" on the Illhoof and Maiden buffs, but "communication breakdown" prevented it from showing up in the patch notes. More info in the comments.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Quests, Raiding, Bosses, Buffs
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zuuler Feb 14th 2007 9:49AM
Blizzard needs to take more control over its upgrades. Seems since 2.0.1 came out, every patch has had some undocumented changes that you only find out about in forums. Blizzard just doesn't take the time necessary to ensure changes are engineered correctly (hey lets give the warlock pets a portion of the lock's bonus spell damage.... ....wait we gave too much to the imp, take it all away).
What Blizzard needs to do is create a set of standards and procedures and adhere to them. They need configuration control to help keep track of and document changes. And they need to test stuff more thuroughly before releasing a patch. I can understand that some bugs are impossible to predict and are going to become apparent at some point. But the issue with the warlock's imp should have never made it to release. That should have been a simple test to see if the imp was getting a portion of the bonus spell damage, and how much it was getting.
Gates in dungeons is another issue (one even brought up in this forum) taht they have a track record of screwing up. After so many gates have had to be fixed, you would think there would be a procedure in place to properly create a dungeon gate. Yet it seems every new gate implemented is broken somehow.
I think what blizzard needs to do is shake things up in their engineering department a bit. They need some procedures to make sure changes are documented and stuff like these boss tweaks don't go undocumented. They need to create a list of known issues and prioritize the list based on severity of the issue, complaints on the issue, and impact on player experience because of the issue. They need to start working on the most important issues and work their way down to the least important. I don't see why there shouldn't be a new patch every week.
Bottom line, Blizzard is making a ton of money off this game, I am sure they can afford to bring on a few extra software engineers and put an end to this constant stream of bugged out code they feed us every few weeks.
Ago Feb 14th 2007 10:11AM
We fought this boss lastnight, wiped once (used the old strat of kicking silence etc), soulstoned. Attacked again, hid behind the pillar when he casted, and dropped him easily.
Takes some basic strategy and a little tactics, soemthing many players have forgotten about since the exspansion. Im glad hes harder now, it will limit the gear given out from him.
Eegg Feb 14th 2007 11:37AM
The first time I did him, in a pick-up group no less, we didn't interrupt his spells at all (I don't think they knew he could be interrupted). It's do-able.
Oneandmany Feb 14th 2007 8:09PM
All that's required is to run behind pillars in the corners of his room. We wiped the first time when we fought him, but every other time we just used the pillar strategy and had no problem. Easy stuff.
Kly Feb 21st 2007 12:09PM
We didn't know kick wouldn't work anymore so we wiped a ton when we did him last night ...we finally got him but it was huge waste of time and very frustratiung to boot.
Dave Feb 14th 2007 11:38AM
Another undocumented change in this patch is in the Shadow Labs. You can no longer dispel the fear the Fel guys do.
Zuuler Feb 14th 2007 12:01PM
What I like most is they nerfed the warlocks imp with a hotfix, in this patch did not fix the problem that caused them to nerf the imp in a hotfix, but still found time to make Illhoof's imp more powerful.
Its really disappointing when the pet that supposed to do the most damage is doing less damage than your wand. At least let our imps equip wands until you fix them, give them something they can use to defend themselves.
ocsrep Feb 15th 2007 9:49AM
"Alistairover of Thunderhorn (who is an oomkin guildie of mine, and, I must say, regularly outdps's higher level warlocks, rogues and hunters)"
And the point of saying your friend outdp's warlocks, rogues and hunters, besides stroking his epeen?
Ocsrep Feb 15th 2007 9:50AM
"Alistairover of Thunderhorn (who is an oomkin guildie of mine, and, I must say, regularly outdps's higher level warlocks, rogues and hunters)"
And the point of saying your friend outdp's warlocks, rogues and hunters, besides stroking his epeen?
Das Feb 14th 2007 3:09PM
There needs to be some rule about only being able to complain if your class is *actually* in trouble.
For example, warlocks complaining about imps.
Of all the classes in WoW, warlocks actually have it really, really, really well off. Try rolling a warrior or a shaman for some perspective.
Eliah Hecht Feb 14th 2007 12:55PM
Tigole just posted about this:
Q u o t e:
Just a simple question to blue regarding the 3 Karazhan changes that seem to have occured with the latest patch.
1.) Maiden buffed
2.) Illhoof buffed
3.) Chess event broken
1) Yes, the encounter wasn't up to par
2) Illhoof was way too easy
3) Of course not. We would not deliberately break content. We'll try to get this fixed ASAP
Regarding 1 and 2, I'm looking into where the communication breakdown happened that prevented this information from making the patch notes. Apologies for that.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=77038182&pageNo=2&sid=1#31
oo_void Feb 14th 2007 6:37PM
Wow guys ... L2P. ;).
In all seriousness, I've downed this boss three times so far with just straight forward DPS. He'll get one AOE effect off before he goes down if he's lucky. No need to run and hide.
Darkweaver Syth on the other hand, has proven to be far more difficult.
Zuuler Feb 15th 2007 7:19AM
@8
I have a warrior alt
My brother has a warrior main
Warriors aren't in trouble, people just need to learn how to play their strengths.
My main is a warlock, and you might think we have it really really good, but really we have it no better than any other class in the game. Everyone has their weaknesses, even warlocks, and any warlock who tells you they can own any class in the game is a liar.
Fact of the matter is, Bliz nerfed the imp when they shouldn't have because it was not affecting content, it had little effect on PVP, and overall it wasn't hurting anybody but trash mobs in instances. There are a lot of other things in the game that need fixed before a seldom used warlock pet.
aaron Feb 15th 2007 4:33PM
illhoof.. the new viscidous
Heyasuki Feb 15th 2007 12:14PM
My guild had a few issues with Steamvault. Our first run through the Tanks had 20,000 health 0.o must of been a bug since when we reset he was fine. Our Second run the first bosses "cyclone" allowed users to still be hit when cyclone = immune to damage so resto druid kept on dying it really sucked. we beat him though >.>;